Obviously, there are limits to all these parallels, but there is one more worth noting: rap has inspired its share of fear and now, liberals and moderates are asking the same question about conservative talk radio that conservatives have long asked about rap: How dangerous is it?
Why are so many of us trying to rap? How many "Listen to my mixtape, bruh" tweets do you get a day?
From down-tempo electro to throwback soul to radio-ready rap: How many other singers could cover that kind of terrain in a just a few hours at Coachella?
Some work, as always, was disappointing, sometimes because the artists hadn't been fully able to achieve their vision, elsewhere because it showed a naivety we should be beyond, such as the white Australian man rapping about how rap music is now only about money.
Which I sort of get every rapper raps about how dope it is to be himself, but when Drake does it, it's like he's emphasizing how dope it is to not be you.
There's the still unrealized creative aspirations: "I just meditate," he raps, "about how I could build a new Rome in one day".
The cover of "Relapse," his first new album since 2004, builds his face out of pills, and in some songs he raps about how drugs nearly destroyed him.
A lesbian couple holds hands as Dark Lotus raps about how they "they built the Pyramids while bumpin' this shit".
Stalley raps about how he hates fake women, and promotes a blue collar, hard, Midwestern work ethic.
In the song, he raps about how to cherish moments like chilling with your homies to enjoying your mom's food to NOT get harassed by the police.
